Road safety: getting in and out of a highway

Original publication: June 13th, 2024

Update: March 25th, 2026

Author: Olivier Quisquater, First Commissionner - Highway Police

After the publication on the centrists, we received several requests, including one from someone who told us that it would be good to remind people how we get on the motorway and how we leave it.

This is an excellent suggestion, because on motorways, a majority of accidents occur at access points and interchanges. This is an opportunity to remember that leaving a motorway, or entering it, requires taking precautions!

First of all, to enter a motorway, you have to use the launch strip to acquire sufficient speed to be able to integrate without too many problems. A minimum of 90 km/h in normal traffic conditions is strongly recommended. If you arrive too fast or too slow, you will have a harder time entering the highway safely. Then, it is important to remember that you do not have the right of way, so don't force your way through!

To get off a motorway now, you have to prepare in time! And above all, don't do like some who cut several lanes at once at the exit in order to overtake one or two more vehicles. As any lane change is independent of the others, you can't chain them without transition, even when you realize that you're up to the exit you'd like to take. Each lane change must be announced correctly with the turn signals, which means that enough time must be taken between lateral movements to announce them to other drivers.

In concrete terms, for each lane change, you announce your intention several seconds in advance with your direction indicators, and you then make the lateral movement while making sure not to cut off the road to another user. Once this lateral movement has been made, the indicators are turned off.

It is therefore impossible to do this correctly if you decide to leave the motorway from the 2nd or worse, the 3rd lane of traffic just at the exit. But every day we see drivers overtaking as far as possible before exiting, at the risk of fishtailing the vehicles that are on the first lane, and at the risk of being surprised if there is a queue on the exit lane.

Let's add that we also have drivers who get on the motorway and don't have the patience to go quietly from one lane to another and who go directly to the 2nd or 3rd lane of traffic. It's also very dangerous.

All these somewhat selfish and impatient behaviours certainly explain why there are more accidents at interchanges than on other sections of motorway.

Because by always wanting to gain a few seconds here or there, we clearly increase the risks for everyone.